Phoenix Construction v.

IAC
Facts:

At about 1:30 a.m. on November 15, 1975, private respondent Leonardo Dionisio was
on his way home from cocktails and dinner meeting with his boss. He was proceeding
down General Lacuna Street when he saw a Ford dump truck parked askew, partly
blocking the way of oncoming traffic, with no lights or early warning reflector devices.
The truck was driven earlier by Armando Carbonel, a regular driver of the petitioner
company. Dionisio tried to swerve his car to the left, but it was too late. He suffered
some physical injuries and nervous breakdown. Dionision filed an action for damages
against Carbonel and Phoenix Insurance. Petitioners countered the claim by imputing
the accident to respondent’s own negligence in driving at high speed without curfew
pass and headlights, and while intoxicated. The trial court and the Court of Appeals
ruled in favor of private respondent.

Issue:

Whether the collision was brought about by the way the truck was parked, or by
respondent’s own negligence

Held:

We find that private respondent Dionisio was unable to prove possession of a valid curfew
pass during the night of the accident and that the preponderance of evidence shows that
he did not have such a pass during that night. It is the petitioners' contention that Dionisio
purposely shut off his headlights even before he reached the intersection so as not to be
detected by the police in the police precinct which he (being a resident in the area) knew
was not far away from the intersection. We believe that the petitioners' theory is a more
credible explanation than that offered by private respondent Dionisio, i.e., that he had his
headlights on but that, at the crucial moment, these had in some mysterious if convenient
way malfunctioned and gone off, although he succeeded in switching his lights on again
at "bright" split seconds before contact with the dump truck. We do not believe that this
evidence is sufficient to show that Dionisio was so heavily under the influence of liquor as
to constitute his driving a motor vehicle per se an act of reckless imprudence. The
conclusion we draw from the factual circumstances outlined above is that private
respondent Dionisio was negligent the night of the accident. He was hurrying home that
night and driving faster than he should have been. Worse, he extinguished his headlights
at or near the intersection of General Lacuna and General Santos Streets and thus did not
see the dump truck that was parked askew and sticking out onto the road lane.

Nonetheless, we agree with the Court of First Instance and the Intermediate Appellate
Court that the legal and proximate cause of the accident and of Dionisio's injuries was
the wrongful or negligent manner in which the dump truck was parked in other words,
the negligence of petitioner Carbonel. The collision of Dionisio's car with the dump
truck was a natural and foreseeable consequence of the truck driver's negligence.

The distinctions between "cause" and "condition" which the 'petitioners would have
us adopt have already been "almost entirely discredited. If the defendant has created
only a passive static condition which made the damage possible, the defendant is said
not to be liable. But so far as the fact of causation is concerned, in the sense of
necessary antecedents which have played an important part in producing the result it
is quite impossible to distinguish between active forces and passive situations,
particularly since, as is invariably the case, the latter are the result of other active
forces which have gone before. Even the lapse of a considerable time during which the
"condition" remains static will not necessarily affect liability. "Cause" and "condition"
still find occasional mention in the decisions; but the distinction is now almost entirely
discredited. So far as it has any validity at all, it must refer to the type of case where
the forces set in operation by the defendant have come to rest in a position of apparent
safety, and some new force intervenes. But even in such cases, it is not the distinction
between "cause" and "condition" which is important but the nature of the risk and the
character of the intervening cause.

We believe, secondly, that the truck driver's negligence far from being a "passive and
static condition" was rather an indispensable and efficient cause. The improper
parking of the dump truck created an unreasonable risk of injury for anyone driving
down General Lacuna Street and for having so created this risk, the truck driver must
be held responsible. In our view, Dionisio's negligence, although later in point of time
than the truck driver's negligence and therefore closer to the accident, was not an
efficient intervening or independent cause.

The defendant cannot be relieved from liability by the fact that the risk or a substantial
and important part of the risk, to which the defendant has subjected the plaintiff has
indeed come to pass. Foreseeable intervening forces are within the scope original risk,
and hence of the defendant's negligence. The courts are quite generally agreed that
intervening causes which fall fairly in this category will not supersede the defendant's
responsibility. Thus, a defendant who blocks the sidewalk and forces the plaintiff to walk
in a street where the plaintiff will be exposed to the risks of heavy traffic becomes liable
when the plaintiff is run down by a car, even though the car is negligently driven; and one
who parks an automobile on the highway without lights at night is not relieved of
responsibility when another negligently drives into it. We hold that private respondent
Dionisio's negligence was "only contributory," that the "immediate and proximate cause"
of the injury remained the truck driver's "lack of due care" and that consequently
respondent Dionisio may recover damages though such damages are subject to mitigation
by the courts.

Petitioners also ask us to apply what they refer to as the "last clear chance" doctrine.
The common law notion of last clear chance permitted courts to grant recovery to a
plaintiff who had also been negligent provided that the defendant had the last clear
chance to avoid the casualty and failed to do so. Accordingly, it is difficult to see what
role, if any, the common law last clear chance doctrine has to play in a jurisdiction
where the common law concept of contributory negligence as an absolute bar to
recovery by the plaintiff, has itself been rejected, as it has been in Article 2179 of the
Civil Code of the Philippines. Under Article 2179, the task of a court, in technical
terms, is to determine whose negligence - the plaintiff's or the defendant's - was the
legal or proximate cause of the injury. The relative location in the continuum of time
of the plaintiff's and the defendant's negligent acts or omissions, is only one of the
relevant factors that may be taken into account. Of more fundamental importance are
the nature of the negligent act or omission of each party and the character and gravity
of the risks created by such act or omission for the rest of the community. Our law on
quasi-delicts seeks to reduce the risks and burdens of living in society and to allocate
them among the members of society. To accept the petitioners' pro-position must tend
to weaken the very bonds of society.

We believe that the demands of substantial justice are satisfied by allocating most of the
damages on a 20-80 ratio. Thus, 20% of the damages awarded by the respondent
appellate court, except the award of P10,000.00 as exemplary damages and P4,500.00 as
attorney's fees and costs, shall be borne by private respondent Dionisio; only the balance
of 80% needs to be paid by petitioners Carbonel and Phoenix who shall be solidarity liable
therefor to the former. The award of exemplary damages and attorney's fees and costs
shall be borne exclusively by the petitioners. Phoenix is of course entitled to
reimbursement from Carbonel. 18 We see no sufficient reason for disturbing the reduced
award of damages made by the respondent appellate court.